News about Roads

Calendar for Annie

2009-08-28T16:25:00.001-07:00

The most egregious incorrect trailblazer

2009-07-16T19:45:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately I didn't find this, but another road geek on Flickr did. In this picture, a 3di interstate shield has "US 1" instead of interstate numbers. I doubt that I will find anything quite as screwed up as this one.

Road trip to the Oregon Coast via U.S. 20

2009-07-02T10:36:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, some friends and I drove to Newport, OR, which is on the scenic Oregon Coast. We departed from Eugene, so we drove north on I-5, west on OR 34, and then continued west on U.S. 20 when we reached Corvallis. The first minor bit of road related news was the U.S. 20 being signed as OR 20 on the western end of Philomath.

The other, much bigger news was that we discovered that ODOT is straightening out U.S. 20 from Pioneer Mountain to Eddyville. This is no small project, the initial price tag was to be $130 million, but after a discovery of ancient landslides, this amount is expected to increase about $40 million. When the project is completed, an 11 mile windy stretch of road will be replaced by a much straighter 7 mile road, 2/3 of which will have passing lanes. Inside Lincoln County did a 6 minute video about where the project is currently:

The final result of this project should be a win for everybody. It will be easier to ship goods to and from the central coast of Oregon, and it will also be faster for tourists as well. ODOT's site on the project is quite visually appealing, and they even have a Flickr account specifically for it. They have many pictures that most people couldn't take since the majority of the project is only accessible to construction crew members and ODOT personnel. I have included below one of the pictures that I took.

Road guides @ northeastroads

2009-06-24T16:25:00.000-07:00

Since the completion of my school year in May, I've made several updates/new pages for northeastroads, one of the regional websites under the AA Roads family of webpages. The following are my contributions/edits:

Added census data to the main Connecticut page.
Added complete coverage of I-384.
Created initial page for CT 2 and created a Hartford-Glastonbury eastbound guide.
Created initial page for CT 3 with a northbound guide.
Created initial page for CT 15 with a Wilbur Cross Highway northbound guide.

I have more pictures that have been waiting on the back burner due to my being busy over here in Oregon. I've got a whole bunch of pictures of CT 9, as well as the opposite direction of the current coverage of CT 2, 3, and 15. If things start to slow down here, I'll get to work on those, otherwise I probably won't touch them until the middle of July.

1973 vintage OR 126 shield in Eugene, OR

2009-06-24T16:20:00.000-07:00

This vintage OR 126 shield was found heading westbound on West 11th Avenue shortly before its intersection with Bailey Hill Road in Eugene.

Based on the words on the back of the sign, "Repl 1/17/73", this is probably the original OR 126 shield that was installed after the decommissioning of U.S. 126 in 1972. U.S. 126 existed from 1952 to 1972 before reverting to a state highway. Its eastern terminus is at a junction with U.S. 26 in Prineville, and its western terminus is at a junction with U.S. 101 in Florence.

Potential Associate Member

2007-12-31T21:59:00.000-08:00

After some emails back and forth between myself and Alex Nitzman of aaroads.com, it appears that I might become an associate member of that site! That would entail me helping out with updates on photos and captions of photos they have in their backlog as well as adding photos of my own. My specialty areas would be Connecticut and Oregon since that's where I have the most pictures and knowledge of. What this means for my site is that I probably won't be adding much if anything else to it since I would like future additions to go to the aaroads family of web sites. My site did serve a purpose; my guide to US 97/Bend Parkway showed that I know how to take decent pictures as well as write captions.

Posted US 6/Windham Expressway Page

2007-12-31T08:52:00.000-08:00

Today I finally got to taking the pictures I took of the US 6 expressway in eastern Connecticut and putting them on my site. I only have the westbound guide to it done, but the eastbound guide as well as miscellaneous associated photos won't take too long to post. I have taken some photos of I-384 and have considered contributing them to interstate-guide.com so that those guys can incorporate them into their site. My pictures are decent but they will be helped out by the new 8 MP digital camera that I am getting soon.

Here's the page for the US 6 Expressway.

US/state shield mix-ups

2007-12-27T11:16:00.001-08:00

For those of you in the United States, you may or may not have noticed that road numbers have different backgrounds on their signs depending on the type and location of the road. Interstates are in the blue and red shields, state routes shield or border depends on the state with most being a simple shield or like most New England states just a square, and finally the U.S. routes that have their number in a white shield that is a bit fancier than a state one.

There is no Oregon state route 20, however there is a U.S. Route 20 that runs from Newport, OR to Boston, MA. This picture was taken July 2006. The picture on the right is the updated sign at the same location. The upper portion of the sign and the route number shield have been omitted. About a few hundred feet after the interchange there is a sign with that information for distances to Millican and Burns as well as the correct U.S. 20 sign.

This picture is incorrect because route 19 is an Oregon state route, not a U.S. route. US 19 exists from Erie, PA to Memphis, FL. It doesn't even come close to being in Oregon. State Route 19 runs mostly north-south from a southern terminus at US 26 in Picture Gorge to a northern terminus of Arlington, OR at I-84.

Oregon's successor to the gas tax

2007-12-27T11:11:00.000-08:00

Oregon has brought up a good idea for the eventual phasing out of the gas tax and phasing in a road user fee based upon the amount of miles. A transponder in your car would keep track of how many miles you drove on Oregon's roads and would transmit that data at the gas pump so you would pay the fee there rather than paying a gas tax. As a revenue source, the gas tax has failed to keep up with inflation as well as the increased fuel economy in vehicles lessens how much fuel people purchase. I think for this to take off, it would need to be implemented in at least a block of states to begin with or even nationally. Also, it sounds like their plan would be to include the transponder only in new vehicles and existing vehicles would just pay the gas tax. This way neither the DOT nor the consumer would have to pay to retrofit older autos. Anyway, more can be read about it here.